Businesses are increasing their reliance on the cloud.

‍

Most enterprises now view cloud computing as an integral part of their infrastructure strategy. In fact, for European IT executives, migrating more workloads to the cloud is their number one priority. The rapid and continuing increase in enterprise cloud adoption can be attributed to a number of benefits. The following points highlight the key reasons why worldwide cloud spending is set to hit 397 billion dollars by the end of 2022.

‍

Cloud services can help save money. 

Cloud computing can significantly reduce costs because the requirement for owning, running and maintaining on-site servers and infrastructure is removed and businesses only pay cloud providers for the resources they actually need.

‍

In some cases, they are more secure than in-house IT.

Cloud providers’ security measures are most likely more advanced and robust than a typical in-house solution used by businesses. Data stored in data centres and travelling across cloud networks is encrypted making it much harder to access for unauthorised individuals.

‍

The cloud can help to improve flexibility. 

Cloud computing technology can help companies be more agile and fast to current business needs as they arise. This boost helps businesses improve their efficiency and gives them a competitive edge.

‍

But cloud computing comes with challenges, and is not necessarily the answer to all workloads.

‍

That’s not to say cloud solutions are the magic spell to fix all enterprise problems! Relying heavily on cloud products can bring more issues.

‍

The cloud can come with hidden costs.

Enterprises of all sizes enjoy the flexibility and scalability of cloud services. However, some businesses find themselves stung by unexpected bills from the providers. Autoscaling can come with difficulties, as some cloud vendors require users to decide up-front on an “elasticity window”, which may cause capacity problems when they face truly unprecedented demand. 

‍

Businesses also must keep an eye on the cost of moving data out of the cloud and onto the public internet—known as data egress fees. These fees occur whenever your applications write data out to your network or whenever you repatriate data back to your on-premises environment. Billed in arrears, these costs often take organisations by surprise as their applications, workloads, and users may continue to extract data and unknowingly run up fees. 

‍

The “unknown” of cloud can be too risky for some users.

‍With cloud solutions, you may not be able to see the exact location where your data is stored or processed by default. This can increase the risks that may arise during the implementation or management of the cloud. For security-conscious enterprises, especially those who handle sensitive data such as finance and healthcare, this can make procuring cloud services risky business.

‍

High performance is never guaranteed.

‍When a business moves to the cloud it becomes dependent on the service providers. The performance of the organisation is then tied to the performance of the cloud provider; if your provider is down, so are you. Sadly, this isn’t uncommon, all the major cloud providers have experienced outages in the past few years.

‍

IXPs are creating a capable ecosystem of networks and applications fit for modern enterprises.

‍

IXPs are an integral part of the Internet ecosystem, and can help augment cloud set ups by providing the opportunity for any network operator to interconnect and directly exchange data traffic. By providing optimal routing for enterprises, they can ensure their end users experience fast, reliable, cost effective connections.

‍

IXPs can handle the huge volumes of traffic we experience today.

IXPs help support the massive bandwidth demand of the digital world, by leveraging minimised latency paths with more widespread and comprehensive coverage. They also help to keep the Internet’s many channels unclogged by mitigating unnecessary long distance trips, a welcome alternative to the crowded public cloud alternatives. 

‍

They help to keep costs low for users.

In today’s era, IXPs unlock new potential and open up the opportunity to all network operators to peer, eliminating expensive colocation requirements, as well as the need to buy and manage remote equipment and remote cross-connect fees. IXPs can also help lower the overall costs for end users by avoiding transit payments. 

‍

Simply put, IXPs help efficiently route traffic, achieve lower latency, reduce costs, and increase coverage and reach. In the face of expanding global network demands, IXPs are helping to enhance the global flow of information in the most cost-effective and efficient way.

Peering at Italy’s leading Internet Exchange Point.

With IXPs across Italy, (Milan metro area, Bologna and Palermo) totalling 10 Points of Presence (PoPs), MIX offers the perfect strategic gateway between central and southern Europe. The MIX interconnection platform offers customers an opportunity to exchange Internet traffic with enhanced network performance and increased data flow control, reducing latency and IP Transit costs. For more information, you can reach out to our IXP experts here.